The strident buzz of voices softens to a murmur as the lights fade above
the packed audience. Through the mists swirling over the stage, a steady
drum rhythm, shrouded in the low hum of a single synthesizer note, swells
gradually into awareness. A spotlight stabs down through the hazy atmosphere
and illuminates the iridescent coloured costume of a single figure slowly
pacing out of the fog. As the microphone clasped in his right hand reaches
his lips, comes the first line of his song: "Itís always cold inside the
icehouse", and a murmur of recognition from the crowd mingles with the music.

In this way began the performance of the headline act of
the Concert for Ď89; with a song synonymous with both the group and the
title of its debut album Icehouse.

This was the last performance of the eighties decade for
this Australian group, the culmination of a long bout of touring with
the music from a catalogue of successful records, including the highest
ever selling album in this country by an Australian band Man of Colours.
There have been more Icehouse performances since, in the nineties, and
there certainly were many more prior to this one, extending back into
the seventies.

Yet, how many among the record crowd filling the Sydney
Entertainment Centre that night of March 10th, 1989, really appreciated
any more about the group on stage than what they were seeing and hearing
at that moment? How many from the other performances before and since,
or of the countless other fans throughout Australia and overseas, know
the history and background of this band and its members?

How many remember how it burst out of the chrysalis of a
poverty ridden covers performer in Sydney pubs in the late seventies,
to become the brilliant butterfly of one of the most outstanding recording
and performing successes of the eighties, dominant in the Australasian
popular music scene and highly significant in the wider spheres of Europe
and North America? How many have any real knowledge of Icehouse, the band,
how it began, what it has done, its music, its songs and its people?

What follows has been written and recorded to supply that
knowledge. This is the story of Icehouse.